Light Up The Darkness
by Will Heston
Summary: I Am Legend retold in the Spider-Man Movie-verse. Peter Parker and his daughter May are the last survivors of a plague that destroyed civilization. They fight to stay alive in a postapocalytic New York City while the infected lurk in the shadows, waiting.
1. Prologue

**LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS**

**By Will Heston**

DISCLAIMER

All the characters are owned by Marvel Characters, Inc. Some of the dialogue is taken from the December 2007 film, _I Am Legend_ and from the 1971 version, _The Omega Man_. The author respects and acknowledges all copyrights and trademarks, and does not make any money from unauthorized use of those copyrights and trademarks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank HTBThomas, Scarlet, and D for their invaluable help as beta readers.

* * *

PROLOGUE

_"The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open."_

- William Shakespeare, 1602.

_"I started a joke, which started the whole world crying."_

- Robin Gibb, 1968.

_"I have a dream, a song to sing, to help me cope with anything. I believe in angels."_

- Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus, 1979.

Time gives us all a second chance, an elated Peter Parker thought as the final curtain came down on the Broadhurst Theater Company's revival of _Oliver!_. How ironic, and yet how appropriate, that the scene of Mary Jane Watson's opening night flop in _Manhattan Memories_ years earlier would be the venue for Mary Jane Watson-Parker's opening night triumph in the magnificent stage musical about an orphan who finds love in a world full of rascals and thugs. Mary Jane's agent had managed to convince a skeptical director to cast her in the lead role of Nancy, the prostitute with a heart of gold who sacrifices her life in a valiant attempt to save the boy from the evil Bill Sykes. It turned out to be an inspired choice.

This time, there were no problems with Mary Jane's voice, and no need to make excuses about the sound system, thanks to stints as a torch singer at the Jazz Room, appearances in musical productions like _A Catered Affair_, _Rent_, and _Chicago_, and voice lessons that helped expand her range. Her rendition of "As long as he needs me," had brought the packed house to tears.

This time, there were no distractions. With Mary Jane's reluctant consent, Peter insisted on sitting near the back of the theater, so as to be out of her field of vision. The last thing he wanted to do was throw her performance off by drawing her attention away from the rest of the audience.

And this time, Mary Jane needed no reassurances that she belonged on stage. The thunderous applause that erupted when she took her curtain call was proof enough. Her character's death scene was so heart-wrenching that a woman sitting next to Peter could barely keep from sobbing.

By the time Peter made his way backstage, a sizeable crowd of autograph seekers had gathered around Mary Jane's dressing room. The moment she opened her door, a hundred playbills were thrust at her. He hung back, content to wait until she had signed them all before making his presence known. He was only too happy to let her bask in the adulation of adoring fans.

"Peter!" Mary Jane's face lit up as soon as she saw her husband. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, nearly getting poked in the eye by a wayward pen.

"You did it, MJ!" Peter said as he hugged his wife. "Tony Award!"

"Shhh! Don't jinx me."

"Oops, sorry. Hey, listen. As soon as you're finished signing autographs, I've got a surprise lined up for you."

"What sort of surprise?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise anymore." Peter gave her a wry smile. "But fasten your seatbelt."

Just that slightly corny hint was enough for Mary Jane to clutch her protective husband's arm and wave adieu to the autograph seekers.

Moving too fast to be observed by human eyes, the two young lovebirds swung through canyons of glass and steel as the lights of the city blazed beneath them. Mary Jane, strapped tightly to Peter's back by thin but very powerful strands of webbing, was laughing in sheer delight, holding her arms out like wings as they sped toward the financial district.

In the years since their friend Harry Osborn had lost his life in the battle with Eddie Brock and Flint Marko, Mary Jane and Peter had come to understand that they were the only ones who held the keys to each other's hearts. Though they had forgiven each other, it had taken Peter a long time to forgive himself for hurting Mary Jane while he was under the influence of the alien symbiote. But over time, the injuries he caused her in the Jazz Room had healed, as did the emotional injuries she caused him in Central Park, while she was under the influence of the new Goblin. Their love secured after a lengthy courtship, they finally got married in a hastily arranged ceremony on the steps of City Hall. Mary Jane was the only one in the wedding party not annoyed at him for showing up nearly an hour late. He had been tied up thwarting a bank robbery.

"Close your eyes, Mary Jane," Peter called out as they alighted on the roof of a nondescript, seventy-story office building near the waterfront. He quickly tore loose the gossamer threads that had kept her in place during the trip.

"Can I open them?" she asked Peter as he took her by the hand and escorted her a few steps forward.

"Not yet." he answered, turning her to the left. "Now."

Mary Jane opened her eyes.

She immediately recognized the card table and two of the plain metal folding chairs that her mother had given them. Spread out atop that table was an intimate dinner for two in sealed microwavable containers. Plastic knives, forks and spoons rested on plain paper napkins. In the center of the spread, flanked by a pair of plastic goblets, stood a bottle of sparkling white grape juice. A full moon illuminated their midnight repast, assisted by a pair of flashlights held in place by test tube clamps attached to laboratory stands. Nearby stood a portable microwave oven plugged into a small electric generator.

"Your table is ready, Madame," Peter said in a pseudo-French accent as he pulled one of the chairs out and gestured for her to sit down.

"Peter Parker, you are such a trip," Mary Jane laughed. "How the heck did you manage all this?"

"With a little help from the chemistry department," Peter quipped. He picked up the dishes and placed them into the microwave. "Dinner will be served in thirty seconds."

Shortly after they finished eating, Mary Jane sat down on her husband's lap and began serenading him. "_When you get caught between the moon and New York City..."_ she sang, remembering an old Christopher Cross tune, one of many numbers she had made memorable for the Jazz Room's patrons. "_The best that you can do is fall in love..."_

"A toast," Peter proclaimed as he filled their goblets. "To the most talented actress and beautiful songbird ever to grace a stage."

Mary Jane gazed into her husband's eyes. "I _was_ good tonight, wasn't I?" she asked as she sipped her "champagne." Gone from her voice was any trace of those nagging insecurities and self-doubts that had plagued her throughout her life. After so many years of struggle, Mary Jane Watson-Parker had finally come into her own.

"You were awesome," Peter said softly. "Everybody in that theater was on their feet for you." Though he could never be completely objective about his wife's stage presence, his reaction this time was in sync with everyone else's.

Overcome by her husband's outpouring of genuine, heartfelt praise, Mary Jane buried her face in his shoulder. "I love you so much, Peter," she whispered, muffling a sob before it could escape her lips.

"And I've always loved you, MJ," he whispered back, wiping away a tiny tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. "Without you, I'd be nothing."

She lifted her face toward his. As their lips met, imaginary fireworks started going off all around them.

After they broke their kiss, Peter took Mary Jane's left hand in both of his, keeping his eyes fixed on the engagement ring and wedding band that had once belonged to May Reilly Parker.

How proud she would have been, for both of them.

Shortly after Peter began graduate school, Aunt May had joined her beloved husband, Ben. He was still grieving a year later. But he took comfort in the fact that she had lived long enough to see her nephew on the path toward wedded bliss with the love of his life and to a solid, stable career.

Despite the turbulence in his life, Peter managed to finish college a year ahead of schedule, graduating at the top of his class from Empire State University with a double-major in physics and molecular biology. He went on to earn a masters degree in genetics, getting through the entire two-year program in one year. He had planned to pursue a doctorate in that field, but ultimately opted for virology after attending a lecture by Dr. Alice Krippin, a world-renowned medical scientist from Great Britain who had pioneered the use of viruses to combat disease. He came out of that lecture convinced that Dr. Krippin's work would lead to the next big scientific breakthrough and that his unique combination of credentials would position him to play a major role in it.

After completing his studies, he received an appointment as an assistant professor in ESU's life sciences department. Among the perks which came with that office, besides much-needed fringe benefits, was a town house on the north side of Washington Square Park, part of a university-subsidized housing block for married junior faculty and graduate students. Originally built for New York's financial barons in the mid-nineteenth century, the home boasted five spacious floors, a fully equipped basement laboratory, doric columns flanking its front door, and a spectacular view of the massive arch which stood at the entrance to the park. It was the largest living space that either he or Mary Jane had ever occupied.

As the low man on the academic totem pole, Peter was assigned the not-so-enviable task of teaching freshman biology, a small price to pay for the privilege of working for his mentor, Dr. Curtis Connors. But he was expected to engage in cutting-edge research and did not disappoint, having published three articles on spontaneous viral mutations during his first year of teaching. His students loved him, too. They appreciated his seemingly boundless energy, enthusiasm for his subject, and considerable, though frequently unsuccessful effort not to talk over their heads.

Through it all, he remained faithful to his great responsibility, keeping crime at bay and saving lives, until the news that Mary Jane had delivered three weeks earlier had finally forced him to confront a day of reckoning.

Peter stole a glance at his wife's stomach. There was no bump yet. But there would be, soon.

"How are you feeling, MJ?"

She gave him the smile that always melted his heart and made everything in his world perfect for the briefest of moments. "Wonderful."

"No morning sickness?"

"None," Mary Jane replied cheerfully. "You know, the baby's due next May. Maybe Aunt May's sending a message about what we should name her?"

"You sure it's going to be a girl?"

"I've got a feeling."

Still clasping his wife's hand, Peter nuzzled his cheek next to hers as he stared at the huge black swath that was New York Harbor, a vast stretch of shiny darkness punctuated by ripples of reflected light. He knew that he could not put this off any longer, but he also would not be able to make this decision without her help.

Mary Jane recognized her husband's distracted expression. She had seen before, usually when he had something important to say, but had trouble saying it. "Something on your mind, sweetheart?"

"Actually, yes." He continued to gaze at the tiny red flashing lights atop the Verrazano Bridge. "I was sort of thinking of quitting the night shift."

He had been expecting a surprised reaction from Mary Jane, but there was none. She simply turned toward him, keeping her expression neutral. "Peter, are you sure that's what you really want?" she asked in a detached, almost clinical manner.

"I don't know," Peter sighed. "Every time I start to think about it, I can still hear Uncle Ben whispering that same refrain over and over again - 'with great power comes great responsibility'. But when Flint Marko apologized for what happened to Uncle Ben...something inside me just died. Ever since then, I've felt like I'd just been going through the motions. And now, we have a baby on the way..." His voice trailed off, then abruptly returned, filled with resoluteness. "I'm just not into it anymore, MJ. Heck, I'd rather be changing diapers at three o'clock in the morning than be out there taking risks that our insurance policy won't cover." He paused again, drawing a deep breath this time. "I just want us to have a normal life together, that's all. Does that mean I'm shirking my responsibilities?"

"I don't think so," she replied matter-of-factly. "But I may not be the best person to ask. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd lose a lot of sleep if Spider-Man calls it a day. But didn't someone once tell you that intelligence is a gift?"

"To be used for the good of mankind," Peter echoed, finishing the thought.

"Well, you're doing that, aren't you? You'll probably save more lives in a week as a virologist than Spider-Man ever could the entire time he's been around." An impish gleam appeared in her lucious green eyes. "And better you than me when it comes to changing diapers. So, the next time Uncle Ben starts whispering in your ear, tell him that you've got new responsibilities - to your family and your profession. I'm sure he'll understand."

Now it was Peter's turn to feel tears welling up. Mary Jane's wisdom and compassion more than matched her beauty. She must have known all along that he would eventually figure out when to close that chapter in his life and move on. And she was patient enough to let him decide in his own time and on his own terms when his alter ego should retire.

She truly was the glue that held his world together.

"I love you," he said softly. "Did I say that already?"

"Say it as many times as you want, Honey."

They were about to kiss again when Peter's watch chirped. Peter's eyes widened as he realized how much time had gone by.

"Uh oh. It's two in the morning, and I have to be on campus at eight."

"How come? Your Wednesday class doesn't start until eleven."

"I'll be at the medical school. We'll be commencing clinical trials for Dr. Krippen's new cancer therapy. Dr. Cortman's people will actually run the studies. I'll be in charge of data collection and analysis."

Mary Jane furrowed her brow. She was vaguely familiar with Dr. Krippin's work, having heard her husband mention it during rehearsals of his dissertation defense. "Sounds rather complicated, you know, infecting cancer patients with a virus help them get better?"

"Actually, the premise is quite simple," Peter explained. "Dr. Krippin is taking the measles virus. something that nature designed, and reprogramming on a genetic level to make it work for the body rather than against it." He recalled an analogy that he had once used to explain the concept to his Bio 101 class. "Think of your body as a highway, and the measles as an extremely fast car being driven by a very bad man. By changing the virus's DNA, she's getting rid of that bad guy and putting a cop behind the wheel instead. That's the theory anyway."

"How long before you know whether it works or not?"

Peter shrugged. "Hard to say. Maybe a year or two. The study's huge. We'll have over ten-thousand patients coming in from around the world."

Mary Jane whistled, clearly impressed at the size of the undertaking.

"I just thought of something, MJ," Peter continued. "If Dr. Krippin succeeds, she could win the Nobel Prize by putting the oncologists out of business." He gently nudged Mary Jane off his lap and stood up. "Can I have the last dance, Mrs. Tiger?"

"Of course, Dr. Tiger. What would you like to dance to?"

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPod. "Three Little Birds, by Bob Marley," he said. "I downloaded it this morning."

Mary Jane flashed her magnificent smile again as she recalled the last night of their honeymoon, when she and Peter had danced to that tune and many others at the Blue Iguana, a beachfront café near Montego Bay. Afterward, they made love in the surf until sunrise.

Holding each other close, they sang the uplifting lyrics of a classic reggae melody together, with Peter crooning off-key, as usual...

_Don't worry 'bout a thing,  
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right. _

_Rise up this mornin',  
Smiled with the risin' sun,  
Three little birds  
Pitch by my doorstep  
Singin' sweet songs  
Of melodies pure and true,  
Sayin, "This is my message to you-who-who."_

Mary Jane nestled her head against her husband's chest. "Do you know what I like about Bob Marley?" she asked softly.

Peter shook his head.

"He had this idea that you could cure racism and hate, literally cure it, by injecting music and love into people's lives. Something you virologists should take to heart."

With that, Mary Jane Watson-Parker gazed up at her husband, locking her gorgeous emerald eyes onto his. And in those eyes, Peter Benjamin Parker saw a reflection of total peace…

SEVEN YEARS LATER…

"_My name is Peter Parker. My daughter and I are survivors, living in New York City. I am broadcasting on all AM frequencies. I can be reached at Peter dot Parker at ESU dot EDU. __If you are out there … If anyone is out there... We can provide food. We can provide shelter. We can provide security. If there's anybody out there… anybody…please… you are not alone."_


	2. Daydreaming Can Get You Killed

CHAPTER I

_Nothing happened the way it was supposed to happen._

What should have been a miracle cure for cancer had somehow morphed into a global pandemic, wiping out ninety-seven percent of the world's population in less than eighteen months. Humanity was gone, finished, all except for Dr. Peter Parker, May Parker, and nearly three hundred million hemocytes. The Parkers owed their survival to their arachnid DNA, which Peter had acquired from the bite of a genetically engineered spider and May had inherited. The hemocytes owed theirs to the rapidly mutating virus which transformed them into flesh-eating vampires that swarmed across the night like piranhas on a feeding frenzy.

New York City had been ground zero. Once home to more than eight million souls, the city that never slept was now still and silent, except for the chirping of birds and crickets, the wind whipping between buildings, an occasional creak of a traffic light swinging in the breeze, and the _thwipp_ from Peter's shooting weblines. Massive skyscrapers stood dark and mute, their facades pockmarked with broken windows. Many were covered with huge plastic tarps dotted with red, orange, and yellow biohazard signs, a final, feeble defense against the unstoppable wildfire that destroyed civilization. Shards of glass were everywhere. Mounds of garbage, pushed around by swirling winds, were piling up in alleys. Abandoned, rusting vehicles had turned once-bustling avenues into junkyards. Weeds, grass, and trees were breaking through pavement and sprouting up in the streets and on sidewalks, a sure sign that nature was reclaiming the territory.

Yet even in the midst of decay, this once-thriving metropolis had managed to retain its predilection for diversity, counting among its new residents thousands of deer, a family of black bears that had migrated down from the Adirondack Mountains and had taken to hibernating in a subway car near the Union Square station, and animals from the Central Park Zoo that a sympathetic keeper had released just before the end. All this on top of countless insects, birds, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, rats, mice, cats, foxes, dogs, and hundreds of other species.

_With great power comes great responsibility_, Peter would hear his uncle Ben whisper in the wind as he torpedoed through long-deserted concrete canyons, still clad in red and blue spandex.

Those whisperings had real poignancy now, resonating to the very depths of his soul. A lifetime ago, he took it upon himself to protect those who could not protect themselves, almost always risking his own life in the process. But now, he had only one responsibility left. Through a cruel twist of fate, it had fallen to Peter Parker to save humanity from extinction. And that meant finding a cure for Krippin Virus as soon as possible, a goal he pursued with a single-mindedness that was more than an obsession. Apart from his daughter, it was his only reason for staying alive.

The physics side of Peter's double major and his unfettered access to the labs at E.S.U. had brought out his latent talent for practical engineering. Hidden behind the mirrored eyepieces of his balaclava mask were miniature infrared goggles that extended his peripheral vision to two hundred and eight degrees, enabling him to see behind himself in the dark. The spider emblem on his chest, once nothing but a glorified hood ornament, was now a homing device that could lock onto signals originating up to several miles away. The transmitters, which he proudly called "spider-tracers," were crudely fashioned micro-devices that fit neatly inside tiny plastic toy spiders he had taken from a CVS Pharmacy. Ear pieces inside his mask enabled him to hear the signals.

Those devices proved to be very useful in tracking the movements of the hemocytes. Peter estimated that there were several hundred thousand of them lurking in the sewers, in subway tunnels, and inside buildings. While his spider-powers were still formidable weapons, he knew that he and May would be in mortal danger if the infected ever attacked them en masse. Thus, he would spend considerable time beefing up the security zone around their heavily fortified Greenwich Village townhouse, which they had christened "Fort Parker."

On his back was strapped an enormous, custom-designed, military-styled pack with a reinforced steel frame that could hold up to two hundred pounds of equipment and supplies. Around his waist, he wore a wide, twin-holstered utility belt with oversized pouches containing the tools of the virologist's trade - vials, hypodermic needles, scrapers, scoops, specimen jars, anesthetics, and various chemicals used for field-testing. In the holsters, he carried a pair of long-handled, high-powered, ultra-violet flashlights.

To the infected, those lights might as well have been flamethrowers. Krippin Virus had ravaged their metabolisms so badly that a few seconds of exposure to sunlight would be enough to incinerate them. Whenever a test subject died, an event that occurred with frightening regularity, Peter would leave the remains in the sun for a few minutes and use the ashes to make fertilizer for his rooftop hydroponics garden.

May would usually accompany her father on his daily sojourns, helping him with the never-ending task of searching for supplies. But on days like today, when he needed to capture live hemocytes or infected animals for vaccine trials, she would wisely opt to remain safely ensconced in Fort Parker, doing her schoolwork, playing with her American Girl dolls, and tending to the garden.

She was an extraordinarily responsible child who had been robbed of her childhood.

It was late afternoon by the time Peter reached his intended destination. Exhausted by perpetual lack of sleep, his head pounding, he alighted on a patch of knee-high grass growing in the middle of the street, near the intersection of 44th and Broadway. Lying in the grass was an overturned baby stroller. Under the stroller lay a small stuffed teddy bear, soggy, but still intact despite years of being pounded by wind, rain, and snow. Pocketing his mask, Peter picked up the teddy bear, trying to form a mental image of the toddler to whom it once belonged.

"Welcome to Tsavo," he murmured. He had learned that word from Dr. Mathias Mahina, a colleague on the E.S.U. faculty who hailed from Kenya.

In the language of the Wakamba Tribe, it meant, "place of slaughter."

_How appropriate…_

A lone tank was blocking the intersection, its gun turret pointing straight at him. The pavement around the tank was so chocked full of weeds that it reminded Peter of the Palisades Cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, where trees practically grew out of the rocks. As he unhitched his backpack, he caught sight of a graffiti message, spray-painted on the side of the tank, in blood-red letters:

GOD STILL LOVES US.

Peter's eyes widened. He stared at the message, incredulous. Caught between its irony and its hypocrisy, he started to laugh, softly at first, then louder and harder until it echoed far across the silent cityscape.

His laughter spent, Peter tossed the teddy bear aside, took a swig of water, and produced a crumpled schematic depicting the sewer system. Checking the intersection signs, he located the manhole he had been looking for. It was partially covered by the treads of the tank. _Just what I need,_ he thought, his eyes rolling, _more aggravation. _Wearily summoning his strength, he grabbed the front end of the tank, lifted it nearly a foot off the ground, and repositioned it so that the manhole was dead center between the treads. The bottom of the tank would give him the platform he needed to lower himself into the sewer by webline.

As he let go of the tank, the low-level ringing that was constantly in his ears suddenly became much more intense. To his mind, which was always on edge, it sounded like…

_Church bells...?_

The cacophony seemed to grow louder and louder as a bout of dizziness suddenly overtook him. Leaning against the tank, he squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears with his hands. "There are no bells ringing, dammit!" he shouted, trying to blot out that impossible sound and regain control of his faculties. "There are no bells."

By the time he opened his eyes, the hallucination had subsided.

_Stay focused son,_ Ben Parker warned. _You have a little girl who needs you. Mental breakdowns are not an option._

Meanwhile, the ringing sound had given way to a low-grade buzzing sensation. It was his spider-sense, informing him that something was approaching that did not present immediate danger. A fraction of a second later, he observed a deer wander past the tank, followed by another, and another, and another. Soon there were close to a hundred of them, grazing in the street, oblivious to his presence.

As Peter watched the deer with quiet fascination, his attention was drawn to a century-old theater up the block that had once been a centerpiece of the Great White Way. It had been nearly two years since he had last seen it. He checked his watch and quickly glanced at the sun, still partially visible over the roof of an office building.

_Peter, don't you have a job to do?_

"Take it easy, Uncle Ben. I have at least an hour before sundown."

_Just watch your ass, Michelangelo._

"I've got it covered. Don't worry."

Very quietly, almost tiptoeing, he walked toward the theater. A few of the deer lifted their heads and glanced in his direction as he passed, but promptly returned to their grazing. Since he never bothered the deer, they never considered him a threat.

On the theater's façade, directly above its marquee, was a huge mural depicting its final production. The painting ran the entire length of the theater. It featured a thirty-foot likeness of May's mother, dressed in a vintage WAC uniform from World War II, belting out swing-era classics. Her natural red hair had been dyed blonde for the lead role in a musical extravaganza about the Andrews Sisters. Surprisingly, the image had remained intact, despite long exposure to the elements.

Peter smiled as soon as he got close enough to the read the marquee.

THE SHUBERT THEATER PROUDLY PRESENTS, AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS, WINNER OF 9 TONY AWARDS IN 2012. STARRING MARY JA E WATSON, EMILY KURTZMAN, AND KATIE ARCHLAW.

"Held over for five years," Peter murmured. "Awesome."

_You always said I'd light up Broadway, Tiger. Now, how about making yourself useful and fixing that marquee?_

Looking around for the missing N, he saw that it had fallen onto the sidewalk, but was not broken. He picked it up, and with a swift vertical leap, caught the edge of the marquee with one hand and clipped the foot-high ruby-colored letter back into place with the other. "There," he said as he dropped back to the sidewalk, still taking care not to startle the deer. "How's that?"

_Perfect._

"I love you, Mary Jane," Peter said softly as he gazed up at the mural, struggling to hear the strains of _Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy_ in the background noise.

"_Hey…" _

He imagined her standing a few feet away from him, framed by the front door of the theater, dressed in the black jeans and pink sweatshirt that she had worn when they rode up to the Palisades on his motorcycle to celebrate the premiere of _America's Sweethearts_. Her long red tresses flowed like a shimmering waterfall, and in her emerald eyes he could still see that sparkling laughter that made every guy she had ever dated fall in love with her.

She stepped right out of Peter's imagination and threw her arms around him, her magnificent eyes filled with unbridled joy. Her appearance was so real to him that he could actually smell her Emma Rose strawberry perfume. He heard her muffled sob, not realizing that it was his own. "I'm so happy to see you, Peter," she whispered as her their lips met, those eyes now glistening.

"You're looking great, MJ, as always."

"And you look like you belong on the cover of 'Soldier of Fortune'," Mary Jane said giddily as she lightly touched the barrel of one of his flashlights. "How's life in paradise these days?"

"Same as always. Scavenging by day, searching for the holy grail by night."

"Have you isolated the right DNA sequence?"

Peter shook his head. "I've been close so many times. I thought I'd nailed it with GA three-ninety, but the vaccine didn't take. The subject expired this morning." He shook his head and sighed. "Just fishing in the dark, MJ."

"Hang in there, Tiger," Mary Jane said, stroking his stubble-covered cheek, an expression of sympathy on her face. "I know you'll find the answer. You always do."

For, Peter talking shop was becoming too depressing. "You want to go for a walk?"

"Love to, love."

They strolled up Broadway together, arm-in-arm, jostled by harried pedestrians, most of them commuters anxious to get home to their families in the suburbs.

"I saw you and May at Yankee Stadium last week," Mary Jane said.

"You were there?"

"In the bleachers, right behind home plate. I wasn't going to miss my little girl's major league debut."

"Wasn't she something, smacking those web balls out of the park?"

"With Derek Jeter's bat, no less."

"What a ballplayer she would've been," Peter mused. "Her last shot must've gone over two thousand feet. Broke a window in some tenement on the other side of the parking lot. Scattered a flock of pigeons."

Mary Jane nestled her cheek against his. He could feel the softness of her skin. "You're such a devoted father, Peter. I'm so proud of you, the way you've handled everything."

"Dad, mom, teacher, coach, best friend, cook, valet, and a hundred other jobs," Peter replied with that aw-shucks shrug of the shoulders which had always endeared him to his wife. He opened a pouch on his belt and pulled out a letter written in crayon. "She wrote it this morning. Want to hear it?"

Mary Jane nodded.

Peter unfolded the letter. "Dear Mommy Angel," he read. "Today, I got A's from the computer on fractions and French. My daddy says that if we still had school, I would be in fourth grade. He says that I'm a genius. I think it means that I am really smart. I watch your pictures and videos every day. You are so beautiful and I like hearing you sing. I am so glad that you're my mommy and I love you very, very, very much. Oh, and by the way, tomorrow is my birthday. I will be six years old. I have a birthday wish. Please help my daddy make good medicine so he can turn all those dark seekers back into people and I can have other kids to play with. Love, May Allison Parker. That's what she calls them now."

Tears were welling up in Mary Jane's eyes again. Her lips began to quiver. "I miss my baby so much," she sobbed. "I want to hold her in my arms and tell her how much I love her."

"She knows, Mary Jane. I keep you in her thoughts every day."

They continued walking, but did not seem to be going anyplace.

"Are you doing anything special for her birthday?" Mary Jane asked, her buoyant mood apparently returning.

"I promised her that we'd take a ride out to the Queen Mary in the morning. Then it's off to American Girl with Lindsay for afternoon tea. She doesn't know it, but I've already baked her a birthday cake. I had to dip into the sugar and flour reserves, but it was worth it."

"Peter, are you sure it's safe to go into that building?" .

"Absolutely," Peter reassured the mental projection of his wife. "I hung up a dozen or so ultraviolet lamps around the kitchen and dining room this morning. The infected won't get near the place. I promise."

"Are you two going to dress up for dinner?"

"Of course, May insisted on it. She's got a whole wardrobe full of fancy dresses And I've got a few designer suits myself."

Mary Jane threw back her head and laughed.

"What's so funny, MJ?"

"The thought of Spider-Man walking into Macy's Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus and taking whatever he wants," she giggled. "You always used to stop the bad guys from stealing and now you're doing it yourself."

In the midst of his three-dimensional daydream, Peter was able to reflect on his most profound concerns about their daughter's upbringing. "She has no concept of theft, Mary Jane. It doesn't exist anymore. I mean, it's like we're back in the Garden of Eden or something. She thinks nothing about breaking into some stranger's apartment and taking whatever toy catches her fancy. She doesn't know any other way."

But Mary Jane never acknowledged his point. She quickened their pace as they arrived at a very familiar destination. "Come on," she urged, practically pulling him inside the door and through the dimly lit lounge as the band on stage motioned for her to join them.

Peter sat down at a round table in front of the stage as Mary Jane stepped under the spotlight. The manager and the bouncer were still glaring at him, even after all these years, giving the unmistakable impression that they had never forgiven him for the ruckus he had started. "Hey guys, that was years ago," Peter called out to them. "Get over it."

The bouncer emitted a low growl that sounded just like a lion.

Peter turned back to the stage. Mary Jane held up her hand toward the band's guitarist and gestured for him to toss her his guitar. The guitar player happily obliged. In a surprisingly fast display of reflexes, Mary Jane reached up and plucked it out of the air.

Strumming gently on the guitar, Mary Jane began to sing an Abba hit from the seventies:

_I can still recall our last Summer,_

_When we had it all…_

The last time Peter had heard Mary Jane do this number was in an audition for _Mamma Mia_. Even though she didn't get the part, the producers remembered that audition when casting for _Oliver!_.

_Pete and Mary Jane_

_Laughing in the rain._

_Our last summer_

_Memories that remain…_

The lyrics were not quite right. And Mary Jane had never played the guitar, or any other instrument. These oddities were warnings, but Peter was ignoring them. One could hardly blame him, of course. Years of unimaginable isolation had taken their toll on his psyche. Daydreaming had become his way of coping with the everyday horrors that defined his life. Against his own survival instincts, he had allowed himself to become lost in a world and where fantasy and reality blended seamlessly together. And every time sojourned into that world, he would lose awareness of the dangers lurking all around him.

_And now you're working in a lab_

_A family man, a baseball fan_

_And your name is Peter_

_How dull it seems_

_Yet you're the hero of my dreams…_

"Hey, Liberace," the keyboard player called out to Peter. "How about coming up here and showing us something?"

Peter got up out of his chair and had moved toward the stage when a jackhammer suddenly went off inside the back of his head.

A second later, a thunderous roar came from the direction of the lounge's entrance.

Peter found himself staring straight into the flaming eyes of a charging lion.

The people in the Jazz Room scattered, leaping out of their seats in a panic.

Mary Jane screamed.

Peter tried to spring into action, but to his horror, found himself completely paralyzed, unable to move. "Noooooooohh!" he shouted as the lion bore down on his wife, leaping onto the stage and knocking her down with one swipe of its paw, its powerful jaws closing around her golden throat. With one shake of its enormous maned head, the lion violently flipped Mary Jane over as if she were a rag doll, smashing her against the asphalt, breaking her neck. Her hand twitched briefly before falling limp.

And then it was all over.

Crouching barely twenty feet away from Peter, the lion held fast to the carcass of the deer it had just killed.

The rest of the herd had fled, no doubt frightened into a stampede by the lion's attack.

For a moment, the two hunters regarded each other warily. The lion roared at Peter, as if daring him to try and take away its hard-earned prize. As soon as it was satisfied that Peter did not pose a threat, the lion dragged the deer off behind a garbage truck and began to feast on it, leaving him alone once more.

Still not fully extricated from his daydream, Peter instinctively turned around to make sure his wife was all right.

But Mary Jane Watson-Parker was gone.

No, Peter corrected himself, his heart sinking, his eyes filling with tears.

She was never there.

All that remained was the final echo of a fading dream…

_Pete and Mary Jane_

_Laughing in the rain._

_Our last summer_

_Memories that remain._


	3. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

"You're not losing it," Peter whispered anxiously as he listened to the sounds of flesh and bone being torn apart and devoured, barely a block away_._ "You're still playing with a full deck." He kept repeating variations on the same theme, trying to reassure himself that his sanity was still intact. "Your brain's just compensating for lack of social stimulation, that's all. Now, pay attention to what you're here for and get to work."

Half-heartedly pushing aside thoughts of his lost wife, Peter opened his pack and pulled out a rodent trap of his own design and construction. It was an extraordinarily efficient device consisting of a cube-shaped cage, thirteen inches on a side, made of high tensile steel, with a spring-mounted door and a cylindrical dispenser welded on about two inches to the left of the door. When an infected animal stepped on the triggering mechanism on the floor of the cage, the door would slam shut while the dispenser's valve would open simultaneously, releasing a tremendous amount of anesthetic under very high pressure. A handle fastened to the top of the trap made it as easy to carry as a briefcase.

May had dubbed the contraption "the cheese box" because the penny-sized air holes scattered irregularly around its sides reminded her of Swiss cheese.

"Too bad there's no one left at the patent office," Peter mused. "I could've made a fortune off this." Wearily, he slipped feet-first beneath the tank and slid backward toward the manhole. But when he tried to bring the cheese box with him, it jammed between the pavement and the bottom of the tank, failing to clear by less than a half an inch. Rolling his eyes in exasperation, he lifted the tank and pushed it over on its side, hardly exerting any effort.

He yanked off the manhole cover, peered inside the shaft, and gagged. Even with an air filter inside his mask that covered his mouth and nose, the pervasive stench of rot coming from the sewer made him nauseous. His eyepieces went into infrared mode, giving him a clear view of the bottom of the shaft, some twenty feet down.

His heart started pounding.

Three sewer lines converged at the foot of the ladder, one of which was large enough to be a main. The presence of a pipeline that could accommodate a human being meant that he would be vulnerable to attack from below.

_Get on with it…_

Taking a few deep breaths as if he were about to dive underwater, he secured his webline to the overturned tank, grabbed the cheese box by its handle, and lowered himself into the manhole. Suspended upside-down, he let out the line a foot at a time, taking care to be extremely quiet and not to touch anything. Although it was a warm spring day, he shivered at the cold inside the shaft. Stalactites made of rat droppings appeared to be growing out of the floor, the walls, and even the ladder. The assault on his nostrils was unbearable. A slaughterhouse couldn't smell worse than this, he thought.

As soon as he reached the bottom of the shaft, he carefully placed the cheese box on a clear patch near the base of the ladder. Setting the trap door in the open position, he removed a spider-tracer from pouch on his utility belt and deposited it in one corner of the cage.

Still hanging from his webline, he extracted from the same pouch a scoop and a vial filled with the test solution he had developed to detect the presence of KV. He scraped some of the feces off the ladder and dropped them into the clear liquid. The instant the solution touched the sample, it bubbled and turned into something that looked like mud, a telltale sign of hemocyte infestation.

_Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot…_

He opened the dispenser, loaded it with a cartridge full of anesthetic, and screwed the cap back on as soon as the cartridge clicked into place. He was using a mixture of halothane and methoxyflourane, an extremely potent cocktail guaranteed to knock out an animal as large as a deer in less than a minute. Because the infected animals' adrenals were always open, he needed many times the normal dosage administered to laboratory rats in order to achieve the desired outcome. If the mechanism worked as planned, the agent would give him a four-hour window in which to transport the specimens back to his laboratory, take baseline readings and administer the latest trial vaccine.

Now would come the fun part.

He rolled up the red sleeve of his costume, rubbed an alcohol-soaked cotton ball over his elbow crease, and extracted a small amount of blood from the brachial vein with a hypodermic needle. Drizzling the blood around the cage, he made sure that the trigger was thoroughly covered. After inspecting the apparatus one last time, he carefully wrapped the needle in a plastic bag for later recycling, returned to the street, and waited.

He would not have to wait long. Within minutes, he could hear the scurrying feet and high-pitched screeching of the hemocyte rats as they swarmed into the trap, attacking each other to get at the bait. Those noises were even more chilling when amplified by the spider-tracer.

There was a sharp crack, like a gunshot, followed by a jet spray that drowned out the hideous squealing. Though he was expecting it, Peter was still startled by the sound of the trap door slamming shut.

"Wait an extra thirty seconds before bringing it up, just to make sure," Peter reminded himself as he turned on both of his flashlights and pointed them into the shaft. The rats that had not been captured scattered immediately, retreating for their lives into the darkness and safety of the sewer pipes. As soon as the screeching subsided, and the only sound remaining was the rapid, shallow breathing of the anesthetized specimens, he fired a webline at the trap and hauled it back to the surface.

Just as the trap cleared the manhole, his spider-sense went off.

A large, hairless hemocyte rat that had been climbing the walls of the shaft and had somehow eluded his flashlight beams suddenly emerged from the dark maw and launched itself at Peter like a missile, its purple mouth agape, its jagged teeth bared and ready to deliver a bite. He bent backwards at the knees, balancing himself parallel to the ground while trying to avoid the infected rodent which, unfortunately, had still managed to land on his chest. Grimacing in disgust, he swatted it away with the back of his hand. The force of the blow sent the wretched creature hurtling through the air, slamming it against a nearby fire truck and putting it out of its misery before it could burn to death from UV exposure. "Uggghh," Peter muttered as he watched the mangled rat turn black and start smoking. By tomorrow morning, even its ashes would be gone, scattered by a late-spring breeze.

Peter gave the cheese box a cursory inspection. It was packed as densely as the subways at the height of rush hour. He did not find this surprising, since the aroma of fresh blood typically triggered a violent feeding frenzy in every species of hemocyte he had ever encountered. Unfortunately, the rats pressed against the air holes would be directly exposed to sunlight during the flight, and would probably not survive the trip back to Washington Square. He could only hope that the anesthetic would keep them from feeling any pain as they met their end.

Just as he was about to right the tank, the world once again slowed to a crawl.

_Now what?_

Growls and shrieks, louder, deeper, and far more horrifying than the screeching of infected rats, began to emanate from the manhole. "Christ," he muttered. "They must've smelled the blood." Acting on pure survival instincts, Peter slammed the manhole lid back into place. He aimed his spinnerets and was about to cover the manhole with webbing when he realized how much he was overreacting. He backed off, knowing that as long as he stayed in the light, the infected could never get to him_._

Sure enough, the manhole cover opened for a fraction of a second and fell back just as quickly.

"I know you guys have to feed yourselves," Peter called out. "It'll be dark soon enough."

They had apparently heard him, judging from the animalistic roar that came from beneath the manhole cover.

After rolling the tank back on its wheels, he picked up the cheese box with its cargo and shouldered his pack. His watch chirped, prompting a skyward glance. By his reckoning of the sun's position, he figured that he had enough daylight for one more stop. Remembering his promise to May that he would pick her up a new book and DVD for her birthday, he took off for the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Greenwich Village.

* * *

Swinging through the city had always given Peter a tremendous feeling of freedom, as if the world were his oyster, which, of course, it now was. Mary Jane had once asked him during pillow talk whether it was better than sex. His teasingly non-committal answer had earned him a tickle-torture from his then-fiancée.

Lately though, his cross-town flights were becoming more and more of a chore because one of his hands was constantly occupied, whether hauling heavy machinery like a refrigerator, carrying supplies, or bringing specimens back to the lab for analysis. Necessity had forced him to perfect the one-handed navigation technique he had first used during his brief stint as a pizza delivery boy all those years ago. He would let go of the webline at the top of his arc and fire another from the same wrist while in freefall.

May, amazingly enough, had picked up the technique entirely on her own, swinging effortlessly with one hand while holding her doll with the other. It was in her DNA, literally, as if spider-powers had been embedded in her genetic code for generations. From the time she was a toddler, she could scale walls, spin webs, and swing from weblines as easily as other children could walk, without any coaching or prompting from him.

Beneath his mask, Peter smiled as he recalled how Mary Jane's parents, Phil and Madeline Watson, had learned the truth about their son-in-law after finding their granddaughter crawling around on the ceiling above her crib during a babysitting stint. It was Phil Watson of all people, who, after he had gotten over his initial shock, correctly pointed out that May could not go to day care until she learned not to display her powers in public.

But by the time that day arrived, civilization had already vanished.

Peter landed at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 8th Street, a knight's move from Fort Parker. He set the cheese box down under an awning, reached into a side-pocket of his pack and produced a large key ring that held at least a hundred keys, all of them labeled. The keys were to stores, apartments, and other places throughout the city that held supply caches. He had spent nearly two years painstakingly mapping out their locations and locking them down in a not-always-successful effort to keep the hemocytes away.

"Let's see . . . Barnes and Noble . . . here they are." The door had two locks on it. Turning the keys, he opened the door and stepped inside. Orange-colored light from the setting sun was streaming in through the windows, casting very long shadows between the bookshelves. He would not have much time to spend there.

There was a fully-dressed female mannequin sitting at the information desk. A Barnes and Noble nametag on her blouse read, "Edie." Peter knew her very well. He had brought her over from a display window at Macy's.

"Hi, Edie," Peter said with a broad smile. "Kind of dark in here isn't it?"

_Well, if you could hook us up to that nuclear generator of yours, we would have the lights working again._

"Any time, Edie. Just say the word."

_What can I do for you today, Peter?_

Peter reached into another side pocket of his back pack and placed a much-used DVD on the desk in front of the mannequin. "I'm halfway through the G's."

_That's nice. Put it back on the shelf where you found it, please._

"No problem," he replied, glancing at his watch. "Oh, while I'm here, I'm looking for a book of Bible stories for kids."

_Anything in particular?_

"Yeah. Noah's Ark. My daughter's really into that story. Whenever we go down to Battery Park, she always points to the Queen Mary, sitting there in the middle of the harbor and asks, 'Daddy, can we go on the ark'? To make a long story short, I finally relented. I'm taking her first thing tomorrow morning."

_Aww, that's so cute. Try upstairs, in the children's section. _

"You know, Edie, you remind me of Betty Brant," Peter called out over his shoulder as he bounded up the frozen escalator.

_That had better be a compliment, Peter._

He scanned the rows of neatly stacked books until he came to a title that fit the bill: _The Lion Illustrated Bible for Children_. On the cover was a picture of a rainbow-colored ark with the animals, all walking two-by-two, converging on it. He could not quite fathom why May was so fascinated by this particular story, but if it made her happy and turned her on to reading, it was fine with him.

The movie and music section was also located on the second floor. It held a special place in Peter's heart. Early in their marriage, he and Mary Jane would spend an hour or so up there on the evenings that her show was dark, listening to CD samplers and sipping cappuccinos from Starbucks. Other times, they would just make out in the corner, not caring whether anyone else noticed. That stopped shortly after Mary Jane won her first Tony award and lost her anonymity in the process.

Finding the shelf he was looking for, he promptly replaced _Glinda, the Good Witch of the North_ and ran his finger along the row, looking for a suitable replacement. "Gladiator, no . . . The Godfather, definitely not. . . aww, the heck with it." Not finding what he was looking for in the G's, he skipped all the way to the S's and picked out _Shrek_. Now this, she'll like, he thought.

Placing the book and DVD in his pack, he descended the escalator and browsed the shelves on the main floor, looking for something to occupy his mind when he needed a break from gene splicing and sequencing hemocyte DNA. He thumbed through _War and Peace_ and a few other lengthy novels, but none of them could sustain his interest.

He was about to walk out of the store when his eyes fell across the half-empty periodicals rack. The magazines were four years out of date. "I see you have a lot of final editions here, Edie," he called out to the mannequin. "Ever think of selling them on EBay?"

But if Edie had a comeback, it never entered his mind. He froze as one particular title caught his eye. Much as he wanted to turn away from it, he couldn't.

It was the last edition of _Playboy_ ever published – August 2012.

Hypnotically, as if being pulled along by some invisible hand, Peter found himself being drawn to the magazine. He stared unblinking at the centerfold model whose picture graced the cover.

Miss August was a redhead.

A torrent of erotic images flashed in front of his mind's eye as intense feelings of desire began to build in his loins.

Those images were not fantasies.

They were memories.

He vividly recalled how he very nearly fainted the first time Mary Jane had revealed her magnificent body to him, barely a week after calling off her wedding to John Jameson …

How he hung from the ceiling of the honeymoon suite on their wedding night, kissing her stomach while she slid his boxers _upward_…

How he would gently tickle her sides as he loosened her bikini on the moonlit beaches of Jamaica, Hawaii, and Aruba, eliciting that infectious, heart-melting giggle…

And all those months of uninhibited marital bliss, trying to conceive May…

"_Hey, Tiger," Mary Jane whispered as they lay in bed together the night before his college graduation, her head propped up on her elbow while her fingertips softly played across his bare chest. "If I posed for Playboy, I could put you through grad school."_

"_MJ," he replied, "If you posed for Playboy, I wouldn't have to go to grad school…"_

"ENOUGH!"

In a determined effort to stop himself from reaching climax, Peter doubled over, crossed his legs, and tightened the muscles in his lower abdomen until the mindless cravings of his flesh had subsided. He felt disgusted that after all these years, he was still susceptible to urges for which there was no longer an outlet. Those urges were a needless distraction, a constant hunger that could never really be curbed, only managed. And without Mary Jane, any attempt at self-satisfaction left him feeling bitter, hollow, and more alone than ever.

Gritting his teeth, he angrily snatched up _War and Peace_, hurried out of the store and locked the door, leaving Edie alone again in darkness and in silence.

He noted the shadows that were now covering the entire street and extending halfway up the sides of long-deserted skyscrapers.

A lone, drawn out howl from deep within one of those buildings warned him that the Big Apple would soon be waking up for another night of God-only-knew-what.

Cheese box in hand, his back pack once again in place, he leaped toward the urban fortress he called home, covering fifty feet in a single jump.

For the moment, he was still the fastest land animal in existence.


End file.
